i'm an incarcerated guy. incarceration was not the same as rehabilitation for me. it just wasn't the same. but i have been over 500 jails and prisons in 23 years. i speak nine languages now. they're all english, but i speak fortune 500. i speak corporate, i speak kid. i have a 5-year-old. he is safe all day in the home that i have created, not the one i grew up in. my wife is an afflicted convicted lady. she actually did more jail time than i did she has seniority at home. [laughter] >> normal people don't laugh right there at all. don't the wives only have seniority? yes, especially in the penal system. but that was a double-edged sword there, i hope you got it. some of your pot smokers or ex-pot smokers, the jokes won't kick in for a long time. marijuana retards the ha ha muscle. three months from now somebody will go they're all different dads. sorry, your honor, i apologize, i wasn't laughing at you. [laughter] >> the concept here of humor as a basis for approaching a topic that is awkward to discuss has never been a mystery to us. the art of that is sometimes

i do not believe that incarceration has taken us where we need to be. i believe the war on drugs has been a failure. when we institutionalize people over extended periods of time, we take low-level offenders in the early stages and harden them and we send them to the university of crime. by the time they get out of prison, they become a bigger social problem. where i come from, whether it is the [unintelligible] i am on the side of saying we need to reform our system and reduce the number of people we send to jail or prison. we need to reserve that space for people that are truly dangerous and have no way of fixing themselves. we have to realize there will be some people that will go to prison because the rest of us need to have some people in prison in order for us to be safe but that is a small minority. there are many other solutions out there whether it is someone who has engaged in drugs or has a drug addiction. or engaging in some other low- level crime. every move away from a cursory those people in the early stages and deal with different forms

we rank first in the world in the per capita incarceration of our fellow citizens. the russians are fading fast in second or third place together with the belarus people. the rates of the incarceration are five, six, seven, eight times than most in other societies, europe and elsewhere, though their rates of nonviolent crime and drug use are not that much different than ours. so if another country were to lock up its own people at the rate that we do, and if our rates of incarceration were more normative to the rest of the world, we would regard with that other country was doing as a massive violation of human rights. that's the way we would look at it. now, the other point here is what we're doing is not even consistent with american history. i mean, we had 500,000 people behind bars in 1980 and now we have 2.3 million, 2.4 million people behind bars and almost have 5,000 people behind bars just for a drug violation. there are as many people behind bars for a drug violation than we had for everything in 1980. it's not consistent with global standards and not consis

i think that you still have the majority of those individuals who were incarcerated with state prison for possession either had strike priors, serious offenses, or they had pled down from a sales case. >> tal, let me ask you to respond to perhaps marty's point. you're a deputy public offender in san francisco and you've handled dozens of drug case, drug possession cases, you've been -- a lot of people caught their attention when you were quoted in the press saying the way we handle drug enforcement here in california is in effect a war on crumbs instead of the often used phrase on drugs. how do you respond to his remarks? >> well, i think the first thing that we have to recognize is that the majority of people who are caught up in the criminal justice system and who are prosecuted for this type of offense for possession offenses and to some degree possession for sale offenses, the vast majority are indigent people and the vast majority of those indigent people are people of color. so what you have are two systems in place. you have a system where privileged white middle class people b

if another country were to lock up its own people at the rate that we do, and if our rates of incarceration were more normative to the rest of the world, we would regard with that other country was doing as a massive violation of human rights. that's the way we would look at it. now, the other point here is what we're doing is not even consistent with american history. i mean, we had 500,000 people behind bars in 1980 and now we have 2.3 million, 2.4 million people behind bars and almost have 5,000 people behind bars just for a drug violation. there are as many people behind bars for a drug violation than we had for everything in 1980. it's not consistent with global standards and not consistent with our own history. it's costing a vast amount of money and i think what you see is for some of the d.a.'s and others are beginning to say enough is enough. we're seeing prison populations beginning to decline but when it comes down to the question, who are the first people we should stop putting behind bars? who is the people who really don't belong there? it's people whose only offense is posses

so there's more than 2.3 million people who are incarcerated. over 7 million under the supervision of the criminal justice system. of those people who are incarcerated more than 60% of them are racial or ethnic minorities. one in every ten black men in their 30s is in prison or jail every day. two 30s of the people who are in prison for drug offenses are people of color. and those statistics, not just the incident one antidote that captures the nation's attention, it's mass statistics that we'll be talking about today and how the different institutions of government lead to those statistics, what they can do about it, how we want to think about it. we call this new frontiers to discuss racial imbalance in the united states because the hope is we'll talk to you today about the best research that's out there and best of what we know and what we can be doing about these problems. and we're going to start that with this first panel on policing and then after lunch we're going to have panels on prosecution and then mass incarceration and sentencing.

there's more than 2.3 million people who are incarcerated. over 7 million under the supervision of the criminal justice system. of those people incarcerated, more than 60% are minority ethnicity. two-thirds in for drug offenses are people of color. those statistics not just the one that captures the nation's attention, it's the mass statistics that we'll be talking about. how we want to think about it. we call this new frontiers to address racial imbalance in the united states. our hope is we will talk to you about the best research that's out there. the best of what we know and what question be doing. we're going to start with the first panel on policing and then we'll have panel on prosecution and then mass incarceration and sentencing. our keynote comes at the end. she's wonderful to make time for us. she's going to close out our events at the end of the day. she says the book is intended to stimulate a much needed conversation about the role of the criminal justice system in creating and perpetuating a racial hierarchy in the united state

when we incarcerate somebody, we have to do something for them. i was incarcerated for 28 years. when they come out, they are worse than when they were in prison. the thing we need to do, be in touch with the individuals we work with. during the time they are going to sentencing. we need to provide something while they are incarcerated. you just wait for the time to go by. there is no criteria. what you need to do, but you need your high-school diploma. when your time is up, you go. ewing got to do anything. there is nothing you have to do. -- you ain't got to do anything. there is nothing you have to do. they get involved with other gang members and they get worse. the thing we have to do, and if we want it to work, i believe everybody is redeemable. i really believe that. [applause] it's not so, i would not be here. you know? i know i am making an impact on society. i know that. the thing we have to, as the community, -- come as as a community. that is the problem. when i am ready to go to juvenile hall, i have problems getting a pass. and i go there all the time. just to be ab